by Z. M. Wilmot
Chapter Eleven
Immediately upon their return home, the two of them rushed up the stairs and into the device room. Siegfried donned the device first after powering it up, then asked for paper and pen. Henry quickly acquired these for him, and the professor began to sketch madly. After half an hour, he finished and handed the finished map to Henry. “The circles with x’s in their centers indicate the general location of a bridge, and the arrows indicate probable direction – three lines is the most likely route, and no lines is the least likely of the paths it may take.” Henry nodded, impressed at the man’s quick hand; the map was easily recognizable as the local area, as far as the eye could see, and Reinhouer’s eye was very good, as far as he could tell. Five bridges were drawn on the paper, and Reinhouer explained each of them.
“These two here,” he pointed, “you likely do not need to worry about, as the western one is miles high in the sky, and the eastern is far beneath the earth. The central bridge is, by my estimations, the most dangerous, as it has been here the longest, and is also the largest. It is right on ground level, and about thirty feet high and wide. The northerly one – which is farther north than I believe you will need to go – is fairly small, ten feet wide by fifteen tall at my last estimate. The fifth one…” Reinhouer swallowed. “I have never seen before, and on the horizon it appeared as if two or three more were approaching town, and quickly. For today you should be safe, but I believe a new map will be in order tomorrow. I have never seen the bridges move so rapidly, nor with such purpose. I fear that perhaps the beings have some measure of control over said bridges…” The professor’s face clouded for an instant, as if lost in thought. “If they can control the bridges, then perhaps we can exert our will over them as well…” He mused a moment longer, then shook his head. “I will work on that once what is before us is complete. Go now – I will acquire the gold and diamonds, then following that everything else save the wyrdroot and sycamore. The university campus has many sycamore trees – take a bag and collect as many leaves as you can.” Reinhouer hesitated. “Is this…. wyrdroot… illegal?”
Henry smiled wickedly, and Reinhouer was glad for the display of an emotion other than terror from the boy. “Very much so; it’s a terrible hallucinogen. Expensive, too. This powder won’t be cheap.” The mirth vanished from his face. “If it works…”
Reinhouer slapped the boy’s back. “No time for doubts, Henry – we have nothing else to go on.” He nodded and started to walk out. “Don’t get caught,” he called at the boy’s retreating back. “That would put a rather large dent in our plans.” Henry called something back, and then was out of the house.
Reinhouer waited until the boy had driven off in his vehicle before setting down the stairs himself. He entered the kitchen and dining room, moved the dining room table to the side and rolled back the carpet, revealing a trapdoor. He unlocked it with a large key hanging around his neck, completely covered by his shirt, and lifted up the door. A ladder disappeared into the depths, and he quickly descended. Moments later, he was back in the dining room, with him a large bag. He descended several more times and came up again as many. Once he had brought forth thirty or so bags, he closed and hid the door again. “I’m sorry, Sebastian... but it’s for a good cause,” the man muttered as he opened the first bag and dumped its contents onto the table. Countless trinkets of gold and diamond, among other things, poured forth onto the wooden platform, and Reinhouer set to work, carefully removing all that was not gold from each antique, and throwing out all but the diamonds. He worked for two hours like this, rapidly going through each bag with hammer, screwdriver, and knife, until before him he had a colossal pile of pure, untarnished and flawlessly pure gold, and beside it a smaller pile of similar-quality diamond. He then proceeded to grind the gold up with a special tool he had for doing so, and then did the same to the diamonds, until both piles were mounds of dust.
This completed, Reinhouer then filled his bathtub completely with water, and following that set out in his car, first picking up as much powdered cinnamon as the market had in stock, earning him many curious looks, and then he headed off to the gunsmith and antique stores, getting as much black powder as he possibly could. When he realized that he had not nearly enough to make the proper amount of powder, he separately purchased the ingredients of powder – primarily saltpetre – from various pharmacists and chemists, and upon his return to his abode and after the purchase of three large cauldrons, he made the single largest batch of black powder that had ever been made in a private residence.
Henry had not returned by the time Reinhouer finished the powder, and he began to become worried that perhaps the young man had strayed into one of the bridges. He slowly made his way up to the device room and slid the helmet over his eyes, then powered it up.
His vision was then filled with the Parallax, its terrible colour shadowing everything with its terrible unearthliness. The shadows are long in the Parallax, and the light dark, for the twin suns that rule there are of a strange make that no astronomer of this world would be able to recognize or classify.
The vast plain before Reinhouer held from him no secrets, for he had gazed upon it many times in his past. The distant craggy mountains in the north and the pit in the ground to the east were the only topographical forms in sight, aside from what might be hills to the far south. Of plant life Reinhouer had seen none, but it was very likely that something similar to flora existed somewhere in his world’s vast sister dimension.
The bridges burned brightly in Reinhouer’s vision, for the pure light of his world filtered through them into the Parallax, bringing a vague sense of reality to the alien landscape before him – though whether this was good or bad the professor could not say, for the earthly light made the decidedly unearthly Parallax seem more real and thus more dreadful.
Those bridges that the professor had seen on the edges of the horizon were now visibly closer, Reinhouer decided, and there were in truth four of them. He noted too with a growing sense of horror that the five currently near were moving at nearly impossible speeds, and all towards a single point. The only redeeming grace of this vision was that none of the dreadful beings were making their presence known to him, and so young Henry was safe at the present moment.
A decidedly earthly sound entered then into Reinhouer’s ears, and he hurriedly took off the helmet as the telephone’s ring continued on. No one had seen fit to call the professor in many months, and a vague sense of evil seemed to cling to the dreadful ringing noise. Reinhouer hurried down the stairs and lifted the phone. “Professor Siegfried Reinhouer of Malacky University, may I help you?”
“Professor! They got me and took all of the root and leaves! I’m in the jail at the station – this is my one call! Help me out of here!” After silently cursing the boy’s stupidity for implicating his rescuer in the crime the boy had been committing to any listening cops, Reinhouer promised that he would help, then hung up the phone. He sincerely hoped that he could withdraw enough cash for the boy’s bail on the way, for he had a dreadful suspicion that he knew what point the bridges were all headed towards.